Sure, but I have no qualifications or expertise. So take my advice for what it's worth -- not much

mahkceb88 wrote:My 2011 1098T has scholarships being reported at a higher level than the amount billed for tuition (because Spring semester is included in 2010 1098T)

Ignore the 1098T and report the actual amounts you were billed and paid in 2011. For a particular semester, you probably paid tuition minus scholarships, but total tuition billed has to be reported separately from scholarships to the IRS. Presumably, you have college invoices that break down how much tuition was billed, and how much scholarship, and how much room&board & fees & etc. Report on the amounts in the invoices that line up with your actual cash payments during the actual calendar year 2011. Just make sure you keep records of the college invoices and your proof of payments. In TurboTax, I reported college amounts on the "Student Information Worksheet" that offers a sort-of spreadsheet that automatically fills in the tuition and scholarship amounts from 1098Ts, but also offers entry fields for amounts "not reported on a 1098T".

mahkceb88 wrote:Can I get an adjusted 1098T to reflect this disparity?

Ideally of course, the 1098T is reconcilable with the invoiced amounts, but if not you could write to the college to ask for a corrected amount. Having a copy of the letter would probably help if the IRS questions you, even if the college doesn't offer a correction or explanation.

1098Ts that are difficult to reconcile or just flat-out wrong are a very common occurrence in the forums I've visited and parents I've talked to. I reached the conclusion last year to just report actual invoiced amounts and not worry too much about the 1098s. Plus the mess of various possible education credits and deductions, and the considerable additional complications of 529 plan withdrawals, makes this a "challenging" tax area for most parents. You are not alone.

I do taxes with TaxAide. We see 1098Ts a lot. My experience has been that universities are notorious in terms of bad bookkeeping. We always have the taxpayer tell us exactly what they paid and what scholarship money was received. When in doubt, we submit what the taxpayer represents to us unless we have some reason to suspect that he/she is not telling us the truth. In the latter case, we would pack up their files and send them on their way.

When you discover that you are riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount.

I noticed the exact same thing. Here is what I concluded. The school is capable of verifying the amount that was invoiced to you, but not the timing of your payment (maybe you wrote the check December 28th, but they received it on January 5th...which year should they report?). Thus, they just report what was invoiced.

My educated guess is that you can report educational expenses of an amount lower than on your 1098-T and nothing will happen. But if you report educational expenses in excess of the 1098-T a flag will get raised. The IRS may send you a letter, asking you to reconcile the difference. You send them the 1098-T from (for example) 2010 and also send them proof that you paid the December 2010 invoice (for spring 2011) in January 2011. Case closed.

Thanks all for the help. I went ahead and filed as you mentioned and if they contact me about it then I will send in a copy of my 2010 1098 form to prove that it was billed to that return. I then calculated tuition and fees from the university website to calculate the correct figures

I did just notice that in the fees my university listed was "Library Printing Charge". Hopefully this will not be an issue. As a grad student there was a lot of printing to do and this just got charged straight to my student account. I hope it will not be an issue, but technically that is something that the university charged to my account and was compulsory to be paid to complete the degree so I dont see why it wont count. Thoughts?

As others have mentioned, report what you actually paid/received rather than the amount billed per 1098-T. You can usually get a detailed statement of billing/payment/scholarship activity from the university website. If you do this for both years, you should try to reconcile the amounts back to 2010 and 2011 Forms 1098-T.

We don't have any details about your scholarship/grants, but you should also consider how the scholarship funds were used and whether or not there were any restrictions on the use of the funds. Generally speaking, if the scholarship funds were used to pay the qualified education expenses, then the scholarship isn't taxable, but you should reduce the amount of qualified education expenses by the amount of scholarships received when figuring education credits. If scholarships exceed qualified education expenses, then you have taxable income.

On the other hand, if there were no restrictions on the funds and you used the funds to pay for non-qualified education expenses (or if the funds were restricted to paying room and board, etc), then the scholarships are taxable, but you don't have to reduce the amount of qualified education expenses that you can claim when figuring education credits.

Sometimes one method above might be better than the other, but you should report it based on the facts.

*You are supposed to report the amount paid in the amount you paid it.*They can either report the amount billed or the amount received. In either case, this may not match up with the amount paid (either because something was billed in one year but paid in another or because you wrote the check in one year and sent it but it was cashed in another).

There's no matter of "corrected" on this 1098T. The school isn't required to keep track of when you do things; they're only required to keep track of one thing or the other. This is sufficiently common that tax software (including Turbotax, etc) will ask you if there's tuition you paid not listed on the 1098T. Just make sure to keep documentation and make sure that you are calculating correctly each year. If they're using "amount billed," you may not even receive a 1098T for the last year you pay tuition, if there's nothing billed that year.

When I filed, I was using my 1098T paper copy and the statements from my university that showed what I had paid. I had included things like finance charges, student insurance fees, health service fees etc etc. Based on someones response, I read the publication about these sorts of fees and found that insurance is not allowed to be included. Woops...

This afternoon I was scratching my head thinking about what happens if I were to get audited by the (big bad) IRS. So I went a bit deeper and found that underneath the 1098T online, they had the breakdown of the amounts billed for each semester. I added up the amounts they billed me for 2011 Summer and Fall semester (included in my 2011 1098T) and Spring 2011 semester (included in my 2010 1098T).

What I ended up finding was that I got approximately $115 too much for the American Opportunity Act. Should I file an amended 1040 to correct this? If I do so, should I include a page stating the reason for my refiling with documentation of the fees?

mahkceb88 wrote:I did just notice that in the fees my university listed was "Library Printing Charge". Hopefully this will not be an issue. As a grad student ...Thoughts?

While the focus of the thread seems to be on getting the dollar amounts straight, thought I'd mention that as a grad student you are not eligible for the American Opportunity Credit. You are eligible for the Lifetime Learning Credit, which is a lot less valuable.

mahkceb88 wrote:While the focus of the thread seems to be on getting the dollar amounts straight, thought I'd mention that as a grad student you are not eligible for the American Opportunity Credit. You are eligible for the Lifetime Learning Credit, which is a lot less valuable.

Mike

SORRY. That is what I meant- the Lifetime Learning Credit. Was late when I was typing it and I couldn't remember which one it was! Lifetime Learning is what I filed for Thanks for pointing that out Mike